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When you’re female in Blogistan

Violet Blue has written this thoughtful article commenting on the Kathy Sierra story. I’m scared enough by the whole grotesquely criminal story about the threats to Kathy. Yet, one more thing scares me, and it’s apparently just a detail in the story related by Violet about her friend: that the New York Times would write about a hate site “as though it were written by a rascally-but-humorous cad, and linking directly to the hate site, sending it that fat New York Times traffic“. Have these people no decency or common sense at all? And did they not realize that a link from the New York Times could send the site’s page rank way up?

I can link to whatever I want: it’s not going to make much difference in anybody’s position in search engines results. But anybody who gets to write an article on the NYT site should be required to get a tutorial in how search engines work. As Spiderman said, “with great power comes great responsibility”. And if such a publication links to a troll’s site, they’re not living up to it. Period.